Outliers

By: Malcolm Gladwell
Outlier: noun
1. something that is situated away from or classed differently from a main or related body
2. a statistical observation that is markedly different in value from the others of the sample
Vocabulary:
Meritocracy: a system in which the talented are chosen and moved ahead on the basis of thier achievement

Setting:

Rome, Italy
Medieval Village
end of 19th century
United States
Pennsylvania
Characters:
Stewart Wolf- a doctor, studied heart disease, studied way of life; compared Italy to America.
Bill Gates
Bill Joy

Quotes:

"I hired medical students and sociology grad students as interviewers, and in Roseto we went house to house and talked to every person aged twenty-one and over. There was no suicide, no alcoholism, no drug addiction, and very little crime. They didn't have anyone on welfare. Then we looked at peptic ulcers. They didn't have any of those either. These people were dying of old age. That's it"
-John Bruhn
(taken place in Italy)
This quote is explaining America's life to Italy's.
"People don't rise from nothing. We do owe something to parentage and patronage."
"It's not enough at ask what successful people are like, in other words. It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn't."
"Seventeen out of the twenty-five players on the team were born in January, February, March, or April"
“It’s those who are successful, in other words, who are most likely to be given the special opportunities that lead to further success.”
“It would be easier to accept that version of events, however, if we hadn’t just looked at hockey and soccer players. Theirs was supposed to be a pure meritocracy as well. Only it wasn’t. It was a story if how the outliers in a particular field reached their lofty status through a combination of ability, opportunity, and utterly arbitrary advantage.”
“No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich.”
"The results were unequivocal. There were clear differences in how the young men respond to being called a bad name. For some, insult changed their behavior."

Statistic Research:

-Americans have a much higher chance of heart failure then Italy. In addition, Italians died of old age.
-American's were obese. Italians cooked healthy.
-Hockey players who were born in the months January, February, and March are most likely to become star athletes.
- Bill Gates became smart because he taught himself and he practiced and put his dedication into it .
- One statistic that the book talked about was how famous hockey players were born in certain months. Those months happened to be January, February, March, and April due to the cut off date. It makes players that are born in these months ahead in age compared to players born in later months of the year. And what really affects their ability is their birthday and how mature they are.
- The relationship between success and IQ works only up to a point. Once someone has an IQ of somewhere around 120, having additional IQ points doesn’t seem to translate into any measurable real- world advantage.
- Einstein had an IQ of 150 & Langan has an IQ of 195. His is 30% higher than Einstein’s. That does not mean Langan is 30% smarter than Einstein. All we can say is that when it comes to thinking about really hard things like physics, they are both clearly smart enough.
- If intelligence matters only up to a certain point, then past that point, things that have nothing to do with the intelligence- must start to matter more.
- There is a relationship between effort and reward in doing creative work, and that’s worth more to most of us than money.
- If you work hard enough and assert yourself, and use your mind and imagination, you can shape the world to your desires.
-The perfect birth date for a New York Jewish lawyer is 1930. It gives the lawyer the benefit of a blessedly small generation
- Many times a child's personality is based on where he/she comes from (poor,middle, or wealth class)
-Another thing he proved is that a child who came from a wealthy family is going to succeed more and do well in life.
- The triumph of a culture of honor helps to explain why the pattern of criminality in the American South has always been so distinctive. Murder rates are higher there than the rest of the country. But crimes of property and “stranger” crimes- like muggings- are lower.
- There were clear differences in how the young men responded to being called a bad name. For some, the insult changed their behavior. For some it didn’t. What mattered to their response was where they were from. Most of the young men from the northern part of the United States treated the incident with amusement. The southerners were angry.
- Cultural legacies are powerful forces. So far, we have seen that success arises out of the steady accumulation of advantages: when and where you are born, what your parents did for a living, and what the circumstances of your upbringing will all make a significant difference in how well you do in the world.
- In a typical plane crash, the weather is poor- not terrible, but bad enough that the pilot feels a little but more stressed than usual. In many crashes, the plane is behind schedule, so the pilots are hurrying. In 52% of crashes, the pilot at the time of the accident has been awake for twelve hours or more, meaning that he is tired and not thinking sharply. And 44% of the time, the two pilots have never flown together before, so they’re not comfortable with each other. The accident occurs from many human errors
- Rice paddies are “built,” not “opened up” the way a wheat field is.

Pictures:


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